


Phobos and Deimos

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 23:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during the first chapter of <i>The Mauritius Command,</i> Sophie Aubrey considers the realities of motherhood in Ashgrove Cottage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phobos and Deimos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [esteven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteven/gifts).



> Written for dearest esteven on the occasion of her birthday, given that we are so frequently of a mind

Eight months: Fanny and Charlotte Aubrey were now eight months old. Sophie Aubrey could scarce believe it had been eight months already. Then she pulled out her hand looking glass and looked at herself and thought that she looked ten years older than she did before they were born. She was verging on gaunt and had dark circles under her eyes, the product of not having slept an entire night in almost a year and a half, for from their conception, she had started night waking as she had never done in her life. The first symptom of pregnancy had been the sensation of her bladder being pinched continually and it had started exactly twelve days after Jack and Sophie’s wedding night.  
  
They were not especially difficult babies, Sophie supposed. Fanny was a tad more high strung than Charlotte, given to fussing and screaming as soon as Sophie put her down. Fanny had a breech presentation and was born second. She was also marginally smaller than Charlotte and had the colic starting at eleven weeks. No gripe water had served and baby Fanny had proven her volubility in screaming via her tiny but gusty lungs. Jack's eyebrows indicated his shock at finding his baby daughter's voice could outdo any bosun of any ship upon which he had ever served. Charlotte was the graver and more phlegmatic of the two, less prone to screaming and whimpering but harder to console once she was agitated. Charlotte was the more patient of the two as well, though that was not saying much. Fanny was always nursed first, picked up first, changed first, swaddled first and cuddled first because unbroken, her screams would eventually push Charlotte off the deep end. Life had turned into a non-stop process of anticipating Fanny’s needs so that she and Charlotte would not end up screaming non-stop for hours. The worst of it was a night when the girls were sixteen weeks old and Fanny's colic had been extremely bad. By Jack's reckoning, the two of them had screamed non-stop for three hours, from one a.m. to four a.m. The only reason they had stopped as far as Jack could make it out was from collapsing from sheer exhaustion. He and Sophie had walked the floors jiggling them, crooning to them and Sophie had attempted to alternately nurse them to sleep but nothing had served. It had felt more harrowing than any naval engagement he had ever known.

 Sophie had never considered that she and Jack might have twins. As he was now at home with no ship to be had, they were living very frugally on his half pay. A tiny baby did not seem like it could tip them into penury. She had not counted on an extra four people ending up in Ashgrove Cottage. Jack was so sweet and dear that when Mother Williams had lost every cent of cash she possessed in the world, Jack had said of course she was welcome to come and stay with them. Neither Jack nor Sophie had thought that she would be staying with them permanently and exclusively for the most part or that she would bring little Cecilia in tow. Both Frankie and Cissie's husbands were better off financially than Captain and Mrs. Aubrey. Yet for some reason, Mother Williams decided her permanent home would be made with them. So they had two extra mouths to feed and Sophie was faced with her mother telling her, "I must attend to Cecilia," almost every time Sophie asked her for real help with the babies. She could at least get her mother to sit in the same room with all little three girls together while Sophie ran to take soiled diapers to the scullery or for a quick trip to the privy, but frequently Fanny would start to wail as soon as Sophie's foot was crossing the threshold and Charlotte would immediately join the chorus.

They had no money for a baby nurse and Mrs.Williams was little help. At day's end, Sophie was exhausted. The babies were still nursing frequently and both sought out her breast at every opportunity, especially when they were crying. Sophie was now accustomed to the degree to which she had a baby seeking out her body, which was virtually all the time. They were her babies and she loved them dearly and could not deny them, but she was quite tired of being touched all the time, particularly having her breasts touched virtually all night long. She was ashamed to realize that she had almost slapped Jack when he had looked at her in that way she knew so well and had tried to touch her clothed breast. He had looked at her with hurt eyes and she had felt a horrible pang of guilt and then defensive righteousness.   
  
“They are asleep.” She hissed at him. “Let us go to sleep, Jack. We dare not make a sound or Fanny shall wake up.” The night feedings were still an ongoing issue though Sophie was now being awakened usually no more than twice per night. To her great annoyance, Jack could sleep through it. Both babies shared their marriage bed, between Sophie's and Jack’s bodies. They had no cots for them and in any case, Mrs. Williams and Cecilia were sleeping in the only other finished bedchamber in the cottage, the cook having been given an unfinished room. In the middle of the night, Sophie nursed a fussing Fanny until she was asleep again, nursed a sleepy Charlotte and then ended up with her body virtually pasted against the wall to make room for the other three occupants of the bed. She would awaken to find the girls draped horizontally across a snoring Jack, one across his chest, the other across his belly as he lay on his back. Ironically, the sound of his snores kept them asleep and they clutched at him in their sleep, drawn to his warmth, his scent and his bulk. Sophie would tiptoe out of the bed, every day trying to get at least five minutes without a baby wailing for her, five minutes to herself.

Jack was best with his daughters when he was asleep with them draped across his body. Awake, Sophie was surprised to realize the significance of the expression on Jack’s face, an expression she had never seen in all the years she had known him. The look she had seen when she left him alone in the room with them, with Fanny’s screams just breaking out was of actual fear. He would pick them up, jiggle them, and talk to them but he was frightened at the prospect of being left alone with the both of them screaming and crying, even for a matter of minutes. His inability to manage them was deeply unsettling to him. He could attack and carry two ships of the line simultaneously, command a crew of two hundred men, but two eight month old simultaneously screaming babies left him wanting to run for cover. She saw panic in his eyes.  
  
“Sweetheart, they need their mother.” Jack said. It was true, once her body was in proximity of theirs, her presence would stop their tears most of the time, being picked up and held would stop them virtually all of the time and if that didn’t work, Sophie would take them to her room and nurse them in turn and harmony would be restored. It seemed to her as though her breasts were being pinched or patted all the time and she was not far off. The reality was that being touched all the time in such a manner was very irritating and Sophie worked hard to push the irritation down, over and over. She had the capacity for them to touch her but none to bear Jack touching anything but her hand.

As soon as the twins had their first solids, Sophie had been shocked to see the return of her menses. The village midwife had told her as soon as they came back she could fall pregnant again, but given that she was nursing twins, it was not likely to happen for probably a year or more. Instead, it happened right before they turned five months old. Her breasts burned from the progesterone in her system and nursing was almost as uncomfortable as it had been at the outset, when she had literally wept in pain for the first three weeks. She noticed Jack’s lingering meaningful wistful glances in her direction around the new moon and made a point of putting Fanny in his lap with the hope of wordlessly nipping that idea in the bud.

Nothing was more unappealing than the thought of another pregnancy, another nine months of vomiting, another confinement. She would never intimate such a thing to Jack, but given their financial situation, it seemed untenable as well. They had no money for a baby nurse and there was no way she could imagine managing three children under the age of two, given she would be incapable of caring for the twins during her own confinement. She was stretched beyond her ability to cope with the two and essentially no real consistent help. Her mother was better than no help at all, but truth be told, not much better.

Mrs. Williams had repeatedly opined that people who did not have the money should not have children if they could not afford to hire nursemaids to care for for them. Sophie had bitten her tongue repeatedly, not pointing out that ten thousand pounds could have hired more baby nurses than they knew what to do with, that the cost of feeding and maintaining two more heads under their roof was not helping their financial situation either. More than anything, she feared that her mother should ever make such a comment in Jack’s earshot, but fortunately, he had the habit of not listening to Mrs. Williams unless he was directly addressed and of making himself as scarce as possible when Mother Williams was abroad. This was very fortunate, because Mrs. Williams was a fount of child-rearing wisdom: quality people had wet nurses, Mrs. Williams opined, it was not quite the thing at all to actually nurse one’s own offspring beyond the first week. It was, truth be told, in poor taste. Sophia knew that her mother actually believed this, for Sophie remembered her own wet nurse well and had loved her very dearly as she had also been the wet nurse of Frankie and Cissy. Mrs. Williams had always had abundant help, even if they had not lasted particularly long and this she attributed to her own good judgment and Sophie would never had mentioned the fact that her own dearest Papa, whom Sophie missed more than ever now, had something to do with it as well, providing the means and the incentive for the help to stay with generous bonuses for every unbroken week of work attained. As dutiful as she was, Sophie could not help but see something in her mother’s face of annoyance that looked like envy or jealousy at Fanny and Charlotte’s reaction to herself versus their grandmother. Their attachment to their own mother, Mrs. Williams sniffed, was a bit much, also almost in bad taste, like children of commoners. Her own three girls had never evinced such a degree of neediness towards her, of such joy at her return, of unfeigned pleasure in her presence. Then Mrs. Williams would turn to Cecilia and croon, “How is Grandmama’s darling? Shall I retie your pinny, my jewel?” Aside from the fact that Sophie never recalled hearing her mother ever speak to either herself or her sisters in such a manner, she was somewhat taken aback to realize how very much little Cecilia was like a two and a half year old Mrs. Williams and that this fact appeared to be the source of much of her mother’s unabashed favoritism for the child. It made Sophie worry for Cecilia, for she feared that the little girl would not have an easy time of it.

The day that Stephen Maturin had arrived and he and Jack had gone to the Crown for dinner, Sophie had been immensely relieved to see them walking away together from Ashgrove. Stephen was a balm for Jack, the very best medicine there was. She was always grateful when Jack could manage to be off to see Stephen, usually overnight in London, for he inevitably came home in a much happier frame of mind. She assumed that Stephen would adjust Jack’s humours, given the opportunity of a few hours together in his room, with whatever physic Stephen carried with him. Jack had been so very low recently. She would never say anything to him about it and she felt helpless to ameliorate his situation, since Fanny was on the cusp of teething and all the more fractious for it. Her heart was lightened to hear him whistling as he came in the house. He came in their room, kissed her forehead and fell asleep almost instantly when he got in their bed. She was so pleased to see whatever edge Jack had been suffering from for months now seemed to have been taken off entirely by being with Stephen. She found it so much easier to be at ease around Jack when he was relaxed after spending an evening with his particular friend. She only wished that Stephen would visit them at least once a month.

The news that Lady Clonfert would be calling on them imminently and then the subsequent news that Jack would be going to the Cape felt like a cataclysmic storm had hit Ashgrove Cottage, given the pace of their lives where nothing much happened or changed day after day, month after month. Jack was jaunty, energized and running around the cottage trying to get ready to put to sea as though he should leave before supper. Lady Clonfert arrived and Sophie was suddenly conscious of feeling very old, very worn out and very plain. It had been an effort to change into something not covered with drool or worse before Lady Clonfert had graced their sitting room. Sophie was also suddenly aware of a sensation that she had, truth be told, never consciously known before. It surprised her and shook her, this feeling, the sensation being almost something of an itch deep inside of her, an intense stirring within her, a desire that she and Jack be alone and that the door be locked. She had flushed sitting there, watching Jack take Lady Clonfert out to her carriage.   
  
Sophie had rushed supper for them that night with the explanation that Jack must get his rest before leaving very early the next morning. She had gotten the babies’ teething clouts and taken a bottle out from the cabinet. She took a deep mug, Jack’s own grog mug, had filled it a quarter of the way with water, then had filled it another third of brandy. She then went and retrieved the tiny bottle the doctor had given her after the twin’s birth. It been given to her with thirty drams of laudanum. She had only used twenty drops total postpartum. Now she took the dropper out and put it three drops of laudanum in the mug and stirred, had put the teething clouts in and soaked them through, wrung them out so they would not drip and asked Jack to carry Charlotte up to their room as she carried Fanny and the teething clouts. Fanny was already sucking hers before they went in through the door and Sophie indicated to Jack to put Charlotte on the bed and to give the baby the clout. The twins were asleep in twenty minutes without being nursed, a first in their lives.

Jack was almost shocked to find his wife setting upon him, as it had never happened before. He was somewhat taken aback but even more delighted to find Sophie had more ardour for him than he had ever known. She had pulled a blanket off the bed before placing the girls in the center of their bed and she put it on the floor and they lay down. She was quite pink, pinker than he had ever seen her and he was astonished at how she tugged at his breeches.

“Sweetheart, are you certain?” He said, amazed, utterly amazed, given what she had been like for the last entire year, given the rebuffs, dark looks and chilly shoulder he had come to know all too well.

“Yes.” She said flushing. “But Jack, might you... might you use this? At the end, not the very end, I mean, but before the end, you understand, if you please, Jack my dearest?” She said very earnestly and plaintively. Her face turned crimson as she gave him half a very soft and thick worn diaper that had been repurposed as general hand towel. He took her meaning perfectly and was only surprised that she had any notion of such a thing, given that she had known essentially nothing on their wedding night.

“Sweetheart, of course.” Jack said and he fell to kissing her, happier than he had ever been in their lovemaking, as this was the first time she had ever initiated anything. They fell asleep on the floor when it was over, Jack with his face buried in her breasts as he had longed to do for so, so many months, her scent so deeply soothing to him, though he did not know that it brought back a subconscious memory of lying in bed with his own mother as a two year old, so many decades ago. They had fallen asleep happier than they had ever been since their wedding night and the twins slept through the night for the first time ever, curled against each other and sucking their fists.

Two weeks after Jack had left for _Boadicea_ , Sophie was nursing Charlotte and suddenly had the urge to get up and flee from her baby, something she had never experienced. The feeling was stronger and stronger in her with every minute that went by and she wondered at it. True, her breasts were sorer than usual, but she had never experienced this degree of an aversion towards nursing either of them. Again, she attempted to push it out of her mind. She was also suddenly unbearably sleepy in the morning. She had gotten the twins up and dressed, had put them on the floor to play and then realized she had actually fallen asleep again sitting on the bed when she woke up to Charlotte standing and leaning against the bed and tugging her gown and saying “Ma, ma, ma, mama...”

The next day, the pinching sensation was back in her bladder and Sophie knew without a doubt that the midwife’s advice of employing _coitus interruptus_ to prevent conception had been utterly worthless. Ashgrove Cottage would soon be even more crowded and Sophie fell asleep praying nightly for the first time that Jack might be lucky in the matter of prize money with this cruise.


End file.
